Audio Application Notes

Digital Show & Tell, Monty Montgomery, Xiph.org

Monty Montgomery takes us into the lab and uses a series of simple demonstrations to bust some very common myths about digital audio. Test your knowledge of digital audio. This video is fun to watch and easy to understand! Monty takes some difficult concepts and demonstrates them in a clear and simple manner.

Have doubts about Nyquist? Have a fear of stairsteps? Are you worried about ringing? Ever wonder what digital audio does to the timing of transients? This video is for you!

Myth - "Digital audio has stairsteps." 

Myth - "Increased bit depths reduce the stairsteps." 

Myth - "Analog tape has more resolution than digital audio." 

Myth - "Dither masks quantization noise." 

Myth - "Signals lower than one LSB cannot be reproduced." 

Myth - "Digital filters make square waves and impulses ring." 

Myth - "Digital systems cannot resolve timing between samples."

Designed, Assembled, and Tested in the USA

Since 1983, Benchmark products have been designed, assembled, and tested in the USA. Our products are now shipped to every continent, but we are firmly committed to keeping our manufacturing in the USA.

Watch us transform a solid bar of aluminum into a finished Benchmark faceplate. Learn how sheets of metal are formed into finished enclosures. Watch as hundreds of tiny electronic components are accurately placed on circuit boards. See the chassis and electronic components converge at final assembly where each product is hand assembled. Watch our technicians run a comprehensive sequence of performance and safety tests.

- John Siau

The AHB2 - A new and radically different audio power amplifier! Dick Olsher once said that "the first Watt is the most important Watt".

This short 8-second video clip demonstrates some of the differences.

- John Siau

Benchmark has recorded a lab demonstration that shows what happens when a standard two-wire cable is exposed to common sources of magnetic interference.

You will be able to hear the interference, see it on an oscilloscope, and view its spectrum on an FFT. A star-quad cable is exposed to the same sources of magnetic interference and the results are compared. This demonstration shows the dramatic difference between the two cables. The star-quad cable provided a 20 to 50 dB reduction in magnetic interference, keeping the interference below audible levels.

- John Siau

Intersample Overs - Part 1

But, it's not just Spinal Tap recordings that go to 11, every recording you own may also go to 11! How is this possible? If 10 is the clip point of digital audio, how can there possibly be an 11? And, if we use Nigel's logic; if 10 is good, why isn't 11 better?

- John Siau